Abstract
The low-volume spare parts business is often identified as a potential beneficiary of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Currently, high AM unit costs or low AM part reliabilities deem the application of AM economical inferior to conventional manufacturing (CM) methods in most cases. In this paper, we investigate the potential to overcome these deficiencies by combining AM and CM methods. For that purpose, we develop an approach that is tailored toward the unique characteristics of dual sourcing with two production methods. Opposed to the traditional dual sourcing literature, we consider the different failure behavior of parts produced by AM and CM methods. Using numerical experiments and a case study in the aviation industry, we explore under which conditions dual sourcing with AM performs best. Single sourcing with AM methods typically leads to higher purchasing and maintenance costs while single sourcing with CM methods increases backorder and holding costs. Savings of more than 30% compared to the best single sourcing option are possible even if the reliability or unit costs of a part sourced with AM are three times worse than for a CM part. In conclusion, dual sourcing methods may play an important role to exploit the benefits of AM methods while avoiding its drawbacks in the low-volume spare parts business.
Highlights
Spare parts inventories are essential to keep downtime of advanced capital goods within reasonable limits, cf. Sherbrooke (2004), and Van Houtum and Kranenburg (2015)
We find that dual sourcing with Additive manufacturing (AM) is most promising for cases that are often observed in the spare parts business for capital goods: low demand rates, high holding and downtime costs
Demand fulfillment with a mix of AM and conventional manufacturing (CM) production methods has not been sufficiently discussed in the literature yet
Summary
Spare parts inventories are essential to keep downtime of advanced capital goods within reasonable limits, cf. Sherbrooke (2004), and Van Houtum and Kranenburg (2015). Investments in spare parts inventories can be huge, as the assortment contains many different items, among which are many expensive parts, slow movers, and long lead time items. This situation holds in particular for parts manufactured using conventional manufacturing (CM) technologies like milling, drilling, or injection molding. Additive manufacturing (AM), referred to as 3D printing, has increasingly matured to a point where it can be an alternative for spare parts production. The potential is exemplified by Airbus, an aircraft manufacturer, which reported that its A350 XWB aircraft contains more than 2700 printed parts (Airbus 2016). In the low-volume spare parts, business lead times may be reduced substantially, and as a consequence decrease or even avoid the need for safety stocks
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